April 6-8th 2015, 10-18:00

The Sounding Textiles workshop is hosted by STEIM and will be lead by Afroditi Psarra, and Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson of Kobakant.

Fabrics are generally considered to be soundless. They don’t make much sound when we wear them, scrunch them up or sit on them. In fact in many cases, fabrics for these purposes are engineered to absorb and dampen sound. But sound is everywhere and always, and ever since the discovery of electromagnetism and the invention of the dynamic speaker in 1920, electronic sounds have become part of our daily soundscape.

What if instead of considering textiles as materials that absorb and dampen sound, we imagine them as materials for creating and emitting electronic sound? How would our experience of textiles be different, if taking off your t-shirt sounded like walking through autumn leaves, if spanning your bed-sheet played back recordings from a previous night, if your leather shoes composed melodies that became softer as the leather became worn… ?

In three days of workshop we would like to thoroughly explore the possibilities of creating and playing sound with textiles. In order to do so the workshop is structured into two topics that can and should cross paths. Participants will go through a series of intro activities to both topics, but are then encouraged to start an open exploration by picking one (at least as a starting point):

* Playing sound through textiles: focus on coiling electromagnets from conductive fabrics and threads, and embedding and attaching these to fabric materials. Thus creating speaker membranes capable of translating digital signals into audible sounds.

* Synthesizing sound from textiles: focus on constructing sensors and switches from conductive textiles (fabrics, threads, yarns) and using these as input elements for synthesized sound. Meaning the sensors can directly become the parts of an analog synthesizer.

During this three-day workshop we encourage participants to explore and discover possibilities and techniques for making Sounding Textiles and to build-up their skill-set for working with E-Textiles. The focus of the workshop will be to experiment, iterate and refine through a series of prototypes.

Apply:
We encourage participants who have some experience working with either electronics, textiles or sound to participate in this workshop and we also welcome total newcomers to these fields. As part of the workshop application we ask everybody to briefly describe their previous experience with these fields and also mention any particular interests they have related to this workshop. What do you hope to learn, make, achieve?